Foreign students put Japan back on course

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Japan'S universities, the slumbering giants of world education,
have begun to stir with international student enrolments sharply
up.

Such enrolments have increased 54 per cent since 1998, making
Japan the world's strongest performer, according to the OECD.

"No other country has seen a faster rise in the market share of
international students," the OECD said, identifying Korea as the
biggest source but including students from Australia, the US and
Europe.

The trend has come at a good time for Japanese universities,
which are experiencing a fall in domestic enrolments because of
population decline.

By 2007 the number of Japanese 18-year-olds who want to enrol in
university is projected to be 650,000, equal to the number of
first-year university places. It means that virtually anyone who
wants to go will get a place.

The prospect of unused capacity and a shrinking fee base has
prompted radical solutions, according to Dr Christopher Pokarier,
associate professor of business at Waseda University in Tokyo.

Last year his university launched the School of International
Liberal Studies, recruiting him and several other foreign
lecturers. The new school, which has 600 students, was a clear sign
from Waseda, a rich private campus, that it was looking
outwards.

The arrival of Japan as another powerful competitor with a
university capacity of almost 3 million students ought to alert
Australia, said the chief executive of IDP Education Australia
Limited, Anthony Pollock, an expert on international education
trends. The same demographic dip now driving change in Japan would
be felt in Australia and even China.

As other major players including the University of NSW open
campuses in Singapore, a regional education hub, Tokyo's Waseda
University has followed suit. It has also said that it will mark
its 125th anniversary by adopting a new motto "co-creation of
academic excellence in Asia and the Pacific".

Other moves by Japanese universities have been more aggressive,
offering discounts on tuition fees, and in the case of Waseda,
promising that 60 per cent of foreign students who apply will
receive some kind of scholarship. A side effect for talented
Japanese graduates is that choices are multiplying as the best
students are fought over.

Waseda is conducting its international studies courses in
English and a condition of the degree is that one year of study be
done abroad. By the end of the year, 45 students will continue
their courses in Australia. Universities in NSW, South Australia
and Queensland are among 400 worldwide to take Waseda students.

A joint research project between the University of Adelaide and
the University of Tokyo in high energy astrophysics involving a
gamma ray telescope north of Woomera, is put forward by the Federal
Government as a model of future co-operation.